“If one conforms to the world, He’s bound to suffer. If he doesn’t, He’s considered mad.
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki; [Stavros Trans.]
But nothing ever bores me. So much the worse for those who are moulded of boredom.
Salvador Dalí, Hidden Faces
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise pascal
I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea.
Lú Tóng(Poet of the Tang Era)
The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is remedied.
John Dewey
Bonus Quote:
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Every so often I run into a sentence that blows my mind a little bit. Here are a few recent examples:
We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
William james
One must read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles to be an educated man.
Old chinese adage (As Translated by ha jin in The Banished Immortal)
Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg
Distrust of grammar is the first requisite of philosophizing.
Ludwig wittgenstein
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul, or rain or shine The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not Heaven itself, upon the past has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
Mad Saints Day. In honor of all the crazy sages throughout history (e.g. Hanshan, Diogenes the Cynic, Ikkyu, St. Isadora, Drukpa Kunley, Nasreddin, Milarepa, William Blake, etc.)
It’s celebrated by violating some societal convention that doesn’t have direct adverse health and safety consequences (This is not “The Purge.”) Of course, violating even the most absurdly arbitrary societal convention will cause many people to freak out, so the other element of celebrating Mad Saints Day is just getting the f@$& over it.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature, a complete impossibility!
Algernon
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn’t read.
ALgernon
It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.
Algernon
One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.
Algernon; [fyi: “Bunburying” is the use of appointments with ficticious individuals to get out of one’s duties and obligations.]
Tiger Riding for Beginners 